


growing pains

by luminesce (intimacies)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 00:24:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10546878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intimacies/pseuds/luminesce
Summary: It is a compromise, of sorts.





	

**Author's Note:**

> my entry for [the story of us](http://oikagezine.tumblr.com/), a charity oikage zine.

** SIDE A: THEN **

 

They are walking home—which is to say, Tobio is walking him to the station again and Oikawa still hasn’t done a thing to deter him—when it happens. In hindsight, Oikawa can admit that the question itself has only ever been an inevitability, but Tobio’s timing is, as ever, a surprise:

“Am I hurting you? Oikawa-san.”

Oikawa stops walking, still thinking. Tobio stops walking, too, but he’s still watching Oikawa, still waiting. Oikawa knows this because when he turns to consider Tobio’s face more closely, Tobio is already looking back, expression guarded but not unwilling. Braced for impact, and for a moment Oikawa allows himself to laugh at the irony of it, contrasted against Tobio’s eager eyes, his clumsy voice: _Am I hurting you?_

“Now, whatever could you mean by that, Tobio-chan,” Oikawa answers instead. 

It is a safer response, if not a kinder one. 

“No, it’s just, like. As if—”

After all, it’s painted all over Tobio’s face, brows drawn together and mouth rendered open, caught mid-exhale. 

“As if what?”

After all, Oikawa has spent years inspecting the hairline fractures underpinning Tobio’s expressions. Has learned for weeks that grew into months how to parse Tobio’s face, how to let it reveal not the best answer, exactly, but the best way to _phrase_ an answer, Oikawa’s cutting honesty framed into something kinder, something more bearable.

“As if you knew,” Tobio finally settles on, “that it was different. That this is different—what you want, and what I want, and that it’s all. That you’re just making compromises for me, again.”

Oikawa tilts his head, considering. “Isn’t that what relationships are built from? Compromise?”

“I thought that was communication,” Tobio counters. His voice sounds very small.

“Well, that too,” Oikawa allows. _Isn’t it all the same in the end,_ he doesn’t say.

Tobio frowns—conflicted, confused—as if he heard Oikawa anyway but wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to or not, wasn’t sure what he was supposed to make of it either way. It’s oddly endearing and entirely truthful, and Oikawa sighs, because Tobio isn’t wrong, either. He isn’t wrong about a lot of things, nowadays.

“What is it you think I want,” Oikawa says, then stops, tries again. The same thing, just packaged a little differently: “What do _you_ want, Tobio?”

“I don’t know.” 

A moment passes, then another, and Oikawa lets it, doesn’t catch the lie until Tobio all but calls himself out on it. He tugs at Oikawa’s sleeve, eyes downcast, turned pointedly towards a point just beyond Oikawa’s right knee. 

“You’ll be late for your train,” Tobio says.

Oikawa says, “Do you want me to leave?” 

“Oikawa-san,” Tobio says, and now it’s Oikawa’s turn to keep looking, to watch and to wait. Tobio sighs, and before Oikawa can figure out what _that’s_ supposed to mean, Tobio adds, “If you don’t want to stay, you don’t have to. That’s all.”

“You’re not telling me to leave, then,” Oikawa says, soft. The words feel like a confession somehow, and he breathes lighter for it, if not easier.

“Your train,” Tobio repeats, firmer now. Oikawa hums, shifts his hand so Tobio’s fingers catch on the inside of Oikawa’s wrist instead of his sleeve, trailing over the centre of his palm before Oikawa’s hand falls back to his side again. 

The remainder of the walk to the station is quiet, but Oikawa turns to look at Tobio just after pushing his ticket through the barrier, and Tobio nods. Tobio’s mouth is a straight line, but the smile is bright in his eyes. Oikawa holds onto the memory of it as he steps onto the train, watching it pull out from the station, the view from his window constantly changing as the minutes roll by.

 

 

** SIDE B: NOW **

 

Tobio has gentle hands, his touches careful and considering beneath the calluses of his fingers. It doesn’t surprise Oikawa in the slightest; he has a setter’s hands. Both of them do, flaunting familiarity with the other in the intimacy of every sweep of their fingers, each graze of thumb against skin. It is comfortable, and more than a little comforting.

Oikawa doesn’t believe he would trade it for anything else, anymore.

But it’s late, so Oikawa doesn’t think into it too deeply. Doubts he could muster the proper amount of brainpower to even if he tried. He doesn’t try, though, because Tobio is staying the night, the two of them conversing around the edges of sleep, Tobio mumbling nonsense thoughts interspersed with Oikawa carding a hand through Tobio’s hair.

As it is, Tobio’s already halfway steeped into a dream when Oikawa feels it, slivers of self-awareness poking through the heavy overhang of sleep. He doesn’t stop the movement of his hands through Tobio’s hair, only whispers:

“You would tell me, right?”

Tobio doesn’t answer, head nudging closer toward Oikawa’s hand, which itself is answer enough. Oikawa closes his eyes and tucks Tobio’s head under his chin. Tobio’s hands are pressed against the ridge of Oikawa’s collarbone, dipping with every ebb and rise, every beat of Oikawa’s heart.

“If it hurts,” Oikawa continues, not sure if he’s speaking aloud anymore, or if it even matters. “You would tell me if it ever starts to hurt.” _If I’m ever hurting you._

And then he really must slip into sleep, because when he next blinks it is morning. The curtains are drawn, and his bedroom is flooded by sunlight. Tobio’s still here, Oikawa shifting at some point in the night until their positions are reversed: Oikawa draped easily over Tobio’s chest, Tobio’s hand cupped around his shoulder, the other curling lazily along the angle of Oikawa’s jaw once he realises Oikawa is awake, Oikawa’s head tipping upwards into the touch. 

“Good morning,” Tobio says.

“You’re still here,” Oikawa says back, unable to stop himself.

Tobio blinks: “Shouldn’t I be?” 

And then, as if realising something wondrous and utterly splendid, Tobio’s face splits open into a grin. The corners of Oikawa’s own lips tug upwards, almost touching the edge of Tobio’s fingers. 

“Did you _doubt_ me, Oikawa-san,” Tobio accuses, voice grave but buoyed up by his smile, and Oikawa thinks no, he could never, considers that no, maybe he never has.

“No, I believe you,” Oikawa says, head leaning back so his cheek is pressing against Tobio’s chest, just above his ribs. “I believe in you.”

Tobio swallows, then breathes. In, out. Oikawa feels it, the telltale rush of Tobio’s pulse below his ear. 

“Good,” Tobio says, fingers wandering from Oikawa’s jaw to his nape, thumb nosing at the wispy ends of his hair. And Oikawa hums, and doesn’t correct him, or seek any semblance of compromise, because Tobio’s right, and it is, and in this moment Oikawa is nothing but skin against skin, steady breathing, the marvel of something like happiness lingering deep in his bones, filling up his lungs.


End file.
